11/ Here's how they do it:
1. They identify the domain experts.
2. They do CTA.
3. During CTA, they collect details of difficult cases to build a case library.
4. They turn that case library into a set of training simulations.
5. They sort the scenarios according to difficulty.
Conversation
12/ The training simulations serve as the training program.
This is much better, because:
1. Good simulations have good cognitive fidelity to the real work task. Performance transfers.
2. There is no artificial atomisation of concepts! Learners must deal with full complexity!
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13/ Ok, here's an example. Trigger warning: Afghanistan, IEDs, military. Skip ahead if necessary.
After 9/11 the US military had problems with IEDs. These were roadside bombs. Think: Hurt Locker. The DoD started spending a lot of money to detect and defeat IEDs.
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14/ As part of that effort, the DoD commissioned a CTA. Apparently some of the Marines and Soldiers were able to detect IEDs. They would 'have a bad feeling', and take measures to avoid a danger zone.
The military wanted to know how. If they could extract, they could train.
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15/ The group of NDM researchers quickly realised this was a bloody difficult skill domain. Think about it: Iraq is large. Within Iraq, different towns and even neighbourhoods had different IED tactics. And Afghanistan was different still.
Plus the enemy was constantly adapting.
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16/ And they needed to extract something general. Something that would work regardless of where a young Marine was deployed.
Eventually they realised that the most skilled Marines were putting themselves in the insurgent's shoes.
They could think like an IED emplacer.
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17/ Think about it: if you wanted to emplace an IED, how would you trigger it? Say you trigger wirelessly. You would need a spotter. You would need to know when the Marine convoy was near enough to the bomb.
So the insurgents would use a marker. Like a pole, or a rock formation.
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18/ These were the cues the Marines were picking up on.
The researchers had successfully extracted this mental model of expertise. Now: how to train?
Ask yourself this: would you set up a Powerpoint presentation? A lecture of IED tactics?
That would be dumb.
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19/ Here's what the researchers did: they took a video game that the military used for training (called VBS) and built a module for it.
The players had to play AS an insurgent.
They had to emplace IEDs and target blue team convoys. This is what one of the researchers said:
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Replying to
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation the origin of VBS so never say video games are a waste of time?
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